Many different types of building materials are available for constructing building structures such as houses. When selecting building materials for the support walls, a builder chooses these materials based upon cost, durability and aesthetics. The types of building materials considered for support walls include brick, wood, clapboard, stucco and siding panels. Two popular types of siding panels are aluminum siding panels and vinyl siding panels.
In an effort to decrease construction cost, a variety of systems have been used to simplify installation of siding panels. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,236,932 to Grigas et al, elongated metal strips are used for applying metallic siding panels to a building structure without the use of nails or other fasteners penetrating the siding panels. Thus, no holes are formed into the siding panels. Each of the elongated metal strips has a central box portion with side flanges containing holes. The metal strips are fastened with nails or screws along the flanges to the support wall. The strips also have vertically spaced clips for engaging the upper and lower edges of the siding panels.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,420 to Ducker illustrates a metal mounting strip for mounting siding panels. The metal mounting strip includes a plurality of equally-spaced anchor tabs having oppositely directed tongues that receive respective edges of two siding panels. The siding panels are simply and easily mounted to and disassembled from the metal mounting strips without forming holes into the siding panels.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,349 to Aguilar, Jr. teaches a sheet material attaching device for securing siding panels to a building. The attaching device is a longitudinal strip constructed from bendable sheet metal or plastic with support tabs which are integrally stamped-out segments of the strip. Preformed slots in the siding panel are engaged with the bendable support tabs which are then bent to secure the siding panel to the sheet material attaching device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,288,958 to Chalmers et al. discloses a horizontal siding panel system with vertical stringers for holding top margins of the siding panels. The vertical stringers have vertically spaced resilient clips that cooperate with the panel top margin to provide a double locking arrangement. Each stringer is an elongated metal strip having longitudinally stiffening ribs formed along both side edges and a flat central web punched at intervals along its length to provide holes for nails or screws which secure the stringer to the wall.
There is a need in the siding panel installation industry to provide a rapid yet accurate system for installing siding panels onto a support structure. It would be beneficial of this system could be simple and afford an installer a capability of sliding the siding panels horizontally for horizontal alignment under reduced friction before fastening the siding panel. The present invention satisfies this need and provides these benefits.